Results of research by scientists from the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the ASCR have been published on the U.S. National Library of Medicine website. Their work on the STIM1-directed reorganization of microtubules in activated mast cells could help in fighting allergies. The study reports that activation of bone marrow-derived mast cells (BMMCs) induced by FcεRI aggregation or treatment with pervanadate or thapsigargin results in the generation of protrusions containing microtubules (microtubule protrusions). In the study, formation of these protrusions depended on the influx of extracellular Ca(2+). Changes in cytosolic Ca(2+) concentration also affected microtubule plus-end dynamics detected by microtubule plus-end tracking protein EB1. Experiments with knockdown or reexpression of STIM1, the key regulator of SOCE, confirmed the important role of STIM1 in the formation of microtubule protrusions. Although STIM1 in activated cells formed puncta associated with microtubules in protrusions, relocastion of STIM1 to a close proximity of cell membrane was independent of growing microtubules. In accordance with the inhibition of Ag-induced Ca(2+) response and decreased formation of microtubule protrusions in BMMCs with reduced STIM1, the cells also exhibited impaired chemotactic response to Ag. Institute geneticists proposed that rearrangement of microtubules in activated mast cells depends on STIM1-induced SOCE, and that Ca(2+) plays an important role in the formation of microtubule protrusions in BMMCs. and Petr Dráber a Pavel Dráber.
In the presence of Deputy Minister of Education, Youth and Sports, Stanislav Štech, Rector of Charles University Tomáš Zima, Vice-President of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Vladimír Mareček, and other important guests, the implementation phase of the BIOCEV project - the Biotechnology and Biomedicine Centre of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and Charles University in Vestec was concluded on December 18, 2015. Full operation is beginning in January 2016. BIOCEV currently implements five research programmes and consists of six sets of research infrastructure and service laboratories. By 2020, as many as 450 researchers, including 200 post-graduate students, are supposed to work at the BIOCEV Centre. The Centre´s objective is to leam details about organisms at the molecular level that can be used in applied research and in the development of new therapeutic procedures. and Marina Hužvárová.
Another article is by Associate Professor Stanislav Kozubek, the director of the Institute of Biophysics of the ASCR. He explores one of the possibilities of evaluating the quality of basic research and points out some defects of the methodology utilized by the Research and Development Council. and Stanislav Kozubek.